Keywords
case comment, copyright, freelancers, newspaper publishers
Abstract
In Robertson v. Thomson Corp., the Supreme Court of Canada (‘‘ the Court ’’) considered ‘‘ whether newspaper publishers are entitled as a matter of law to republish in electronic databases freelance articles they have acquired for publication in their newspapers — without compensation to the authors and without their consent’’. Curiously, while deciding that publishers are not entitled to reproduce the individual articles without the consent of the freelancers, it also held that the publishers do have a right to reproduce the articles in a CD- ROM database ‘‘as a part of those collective works — their newspapers . . .’’ independently of whether the scope of authorization of the freelancers extends to reproduction in electronic databases. The Court observed that, at its core, the case concerned competing layered rights of publishers in their newspaper, and free- lancers in their articles contained in the newspaper. In this comment, however, the author argues that by grounding the right of publishers to reproduce news- paper articles in their right to reproduce their newspapers — independently of the scope of the authorization to reproduce the articles — the Court wrongly abandons layered rights as they are ordinarily understood in the Copyright Act.
Recommended Citation
Gregory R. Hagen, "Layered Rights: Robertson v. Thomson" (2007) 6:1 CJLT.
Included in
Computer Law Commons, Intellectual Property Law Commons, Internet Law Commons, Privacy Law Commons, Science and Technology Law Commons